Firstindigo&Lifestyle

Christy Rupp’s animalistic art

Christy Rupp was presented at VOLTA NY’ 14 by Frederieke Taylor Gallery. The artist who is known for her 1980s public art projects, was at the art fair with her new work that raises questions about environmental threats and issues around wild animals and nature. One part of her presentation was a series of sculptures around microfauna from the Gulf of Mexico; artworks are made from welded steel and encaustic wax. In another series of sculptures (images above), Rupp explored the relationship between ivory and energy. These were made in response to threats coming from drilling, addressing also accurate issues around poaching. The artist has made sculptures called ‘The Fake Ivory Series‘ (welded steel and encaustic wax) pointing that wild animal spices are threatened to extinction as they are poached for their tusks. The art stands for trophies as desired objects that include animal parts such as ivory. Scrimshaw or tattoo-like scribbles on them make comments on the value placed on energy over life. The sculpture ‘Walrus‘, 2014, a mixed media work with credit card solicitations, concretely points to currency over humanistic ideals that protect our environment.

Rupp, Walrus Tusks with Greenhouse Gases, 2012. Courtesy of Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NYC

The artist’s past includes diverse projects that are politically, socially and environmentally engaging. Rupp participated in the legendary “The Times Square Show” and “The Real Estate Show” of 1979-80, and she is affiliated with Colab and Group Material. To address artist’s past and her works in context, the gallery also showed video and documentation of her art projects from the early 80’s period.

Christy Rupp’s recent notable shows include:

“Dead or Alive” at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY 2010, “Dear Mother Nature” at the Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz, NY 2012, “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 2012, “American Dreamers” Pallazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy w/ Hudson River Museum, and “XFR STN” Transfer Station at the New Museum, NY 2013, among numerous others.

March 25, 2014

Erwin Redl: ‘InMotion’

Erwin Redl had his recent exhibition InMotion at Bitforms Gallery in New York City. He is known for works that emphasize perception, architectural space, kinetic elements, LED-installations, social space and corporeality. The Ohio-based artist visited the gallery himself, and spoke to visitors during the Armory Show week in March. It was fascinating to see how the ping-pong balls rise into the glass pipes in different rhythms making a specific sound-effect. Redl told that his background is in electronic music, which makes perfect sense. The glass pipes of ‘Levitate’ sculpture also reminds of an instrument like organ. It takes an entire wall, and has thirty-one vertically suspended glass pipes. Each of them has a fan installed on the bottom to propel a ping-pong ball up. The fans are then synchronized to create sequences. Acoustics in the small room is amazingly intimate fitting for the works.

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Another incredible installation was ‘Breath of Light’ that is composed of structures each having nine acrylic plates on them. The installations hang in the air and reflect beautiful configurations with green-colored laser beam. The mode of these plates is to go from transparent plain to an origami of variations that radiate around with green reflections. If ‘Levitate’ is fun and sound-oriented, ‘Breath of Light’ is deeper and more mysterious. ‘The third installation, ‘Swing’ is a series of floor sculptures made of spring-loaded metal rods. It raises curiosity as an engineering project. The fans installed on top of the rods make them move or swing back and forth in an airy manner. The rods swing in formation, which makes them seem robotic, and less human-attached. The fourth one, ‘Inclined Plane’ propels ping-pong ball upward with fans. It is the most minimalistic one, perhaps a script for the project.

Erwin Redl is an Austrian-born artist, who is internationally acclaimed installation artist. His most large-in-scale public installation is Fetch (2010), which is a computer-controlled 580-foot long outdoor LED installation that he created for the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio.

… InMotion related video at https://vimeo.com/86196863

… More info on Erwin Redl’s web-site at www.paramedia.net

March 18, 2014

VOLTA NY 14: art speaks back from the walls

Jennifer Wynne Reeves creates collages on boards that some include wire, some hair or feathers, and some thick applications of paint. This approach could by no means represent flat wall art. The dimensionality makes the art continue in space. Objects and paint are not decorative art either, but there is something folk-art in them; or retrospectively ”American” influences. These works suggest, as one work is titled, voluptuous meanings that are material, sensuous and touchable. Reeves writes as part of her artistic practice. Writing collide with personal meanings, and is symbolic in nature.

Reeves, Jennifer, Garden of Gethsemane, 2014, acrylic and oil stick on panel, 36 x 62.5

Reeves, Jennifer, Socrates and Hemlock, 2014, 24 x 18

Her statements, or poems end up being part of the artwork itself. The artist was presented at the VOLTA by New York City gallery BranvinLee programs. The art presented at the art fair spoke about her illness, which is also reflected in her writing:

I think I might not be alive to go to my opening next September. I think I should rush to finish things. I wonder why my body is doing this or that. I think Christmas will be long. I think I won’t be able to save enough money for old age with all these bills, and that an imminent death would be preferable. I wouldn’t have to look for even more powerful galleries. -Jennifer Wynne Reeves 2013, Callicoon, NY

VOLTA art fair offers a chance to get in touch with art that promotes freshness and openness of ideas. The fair is relatively easy to access. It should be, that art fairs can be walked-in-to, so the art can be discussed and shared. VOLTA is like one big gallery space, where multiple stops lead to curiosities, comprehension, and even comparisons. Perhaps art displayed with this many references has a better chance for new perspectives.This year, the amount of techniques was compelling. Among the artisans of art was definitely a Japanese woodcut artist Katsutoshi Yuasa. For him, woodcut is a new way of seeing images and photography. The long process gives refinement of light, and adds the personality. Yuasa works on the printing process and reliefs based on his own digital photography. He uses traditional Japanese printmaking technique, which takes time. Carving and printing are all made by hand. For Yuasa, printmaking out of a photograph has a deeper meaning that what could be expressed in photographs. He thinks that photographs are more like a fictional two-dimensional surface. He says, that carving on the plywood, and the printing on paper, will add another dimension. The result is an abstract reality, which implies both subjective and objective perceptions. Yuasa also worked in Finland in an artist residence. The work ”Ilmatar” is based on his photograph of Finnish forest. He was presented at VOLTA by YUKI-SIS gallery from Tokyo.

Pius Fox is a young Berlin-based German artist, whose works are influenced by modernistic means. Not only the color-scheme, but the meticulous, minimal and graphic output is reminiscent of styles before his own era. His works move between painting and drawing, figurative and abstract, lingering between form(alism) and context. Multiple layers of paint create an idea of space. Fox makes small works that together are like an installation. One can only think how many different ways to place them on the walls. Small works communicate with each other. When separately, the scale still holds a lot of energy and tension. His color schemes represent past times, giving nostalgic vibrations. As if an old gramophone was playing tunes, light curtain had moved to let air inside the room. Colors are contrastive, some of them pale and pastels, some dark and more graphic. Indeed, Fox uses interiors of his own work studio for inspiration, including windows, doors, curtains and so on, to introspect atmosphere. Yet the works have an appeal of formality and outwardness. He was presented by Patrick Heide Contemporary Art from London.